President Dmitry Medvedev’s decision to chair the Council of Ties with Religious Organizations raises the status of that group which up to now had been led by an official in the presidential administration and thus gives a major victory to the Russian Orthodox Church and to its newly-installed head, Patriarch Kirill.

On the one hand, this is yet another indication that Medvedev and perhaps especially his wife Svetlana are far more interested than their predecessors in playing a substantive and not just symbolic role in religious affairs and having the Russian Orthodox Church of which they are both active members play a larger role in the affairs of the state.

One of Kirill’s most outspoken supporters, Deacon Andrey Kurayev said that "the coming together of Church and state in this way could lead to a revival after several years of a typically Byzantine model in which the patriarch would serve as regent for a young president, I beg your pardon, emperor.”